Non-standard sexualities

Wed May 9 23:04:14 UTC 2012

  I would like to thank Joseph Walser, Tim Cahill, Peter Wyzlic, Petra Kieffer-Pülz, Hartmut Buescher, Dermot Killingley, Andrey Klebanov for their help. 
    Assuming that this may be of interest to others than me, I take the liberty of passing the material I received on to the Indology list.
    Best regards,
    Lars Martin Fosse
    *****
    As I recall, the first chapter of Gayatri Reddy's book, WIth Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijira Identity in South India has a brief but decently thorough discussion of historical souces on the third gender. THis discussion starts on page 18 and cites most of the classic studies on the subject. The rest of the book is a pretty good read too.
     -j
     With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture)<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226707563/ref=ox_sc_act_title_7?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER> - Gayatri Reddy;
      ***
Below is a list of references that I've collected over the years.  Any comments attached belong to the folks who originally posted the information on various list serves.     best,
  Tim
     Artola, George, "The Transvestite in Sanskrit Story and Drama," Annals of Oriental Research, vol. 25, ed. K. Kunjunni Rada, Madras, 1975, 56-68.
   Boyce, Paul  2007 "Conceiving Kothis": Men Who Have Sex with Men in India and the Cultural Subject of HIV Prevention. Medical Anthropology 26:175-203.
  Goldman, Robert. [Article on cross-dressing] JAOS circa 1988.
   Jose‚ I. Cabezon (ed.), Buddhism, Sexuality and Gender, Albany: SUNY, 1992.
       Check in the sexual offenses section of Manu chapter 8, verses 369-370 for lesbian activities.
      Serena Nanda, NEITHER MAN NOR WOMAN: THE HIJRAS OF INDIA (Belmont: Wadsworth, 1990).
   Sweet, Michael J.; Zwilling, Leonard, "The first medicalization: the taxonomy and etiology of queerness in classical Indian medicine," 
  Journal of the History of Sexuality 3.4 (1993) 590-607.

  Swidler, Arlene (ed.), HOMOSEXUALITY AND THE WORLD RELIGIONS (Valley
  Forge: Trinity Press, 1993), which includes a fine chapter on homosexuality and Hinduism by Arvind Sharma, and one on Islam as well.

  Thadani, Giti. Sakhiyani : lesbian desire in ancient and modern India. 
  Giti Thadani. London ; New York : Cassell, 1996.

  Zwilling, Leonard; Sweet, Michael J., "'Like a city ablaze': the third sex and the creation of sexuality in Jain religious literature," Journal of the History of Sexuality 6.3 (1996) 359-384.
    >The textual analysis in Thadani's book is somewhat shaky--be very, very
    >careful in using these "proof" texts. You may want to check other
    >translations of the same passages and also the original texts.
    >There was also a special issue on Hinduism and Homosexuality in the Trikona
    >magazine. I believe it was sometime just before Spring 1997-- if you don't
     >get it earlier, I could check the date when I get back to the office.
      >There could be more resources from art history on this topic--check out
     >temples in Orissa and MP.
     I heartily agree with Vasu on this point: Thadani's textual analysis is VERY problematic, and I too would be very careful of endorsing her claims without sound knowledge of the texts in question. Personally, however, I found the material in the latter half of the book to be very interesting, since it gives one a picture of the current situation (which is not so pretty, actually). Still, the book is useful since there is nothing else (to my knowledge) like it, and the bibliography is quite diverse. Tracy
   http://www.trikone.org - Trikone (tri as in trim, kone as in cone, Sanskrit for triangle) is a registered non-profit organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered South Asians (South Asia includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Tibet). Founded in 1986 in the San Francisco Bay Area, Trikone is the oldest group of its kind in the world

      Rachel Fell McDermott's article in JAAR 68(4), December 2000. It's not specifically on sexuality, but some sex-related issues come up.
                 To the array of print literature already cited, add "The Extreme Orient: The Construction of 'Tantrism' as a Category in the Orientalist Imagination," by Hugh B. Urban, published in the journal Religion (1999), 29: 123-46.
      Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai entitled, "Same Sex Love in India: Readings from Indian History and Literature." The authors present a vast array of sources documenting same sex love in India from ancient to contemporary times. Their critical essays introducing the literature of a period (ancient, medieval, colonial, contemporary) as well as specific genres and authors are outstanding--erudite, insightful and extremely well grounded in scholarship on gender and sexuality. After Vanita's insightful discussion of the passionate (though not necessarily sexual) love expressed between Arjuna and Krishna, you'll never read the Mahabharata the same way again.
  Hall, Kira

      2005 Intertextual Sexuality: Parodies of Class, Identity and Desire in Liminal Delhi. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15(1):125-144.

  Khanna, Akshay
         2007 Us "Sexuality" Types: A Critical Engagement with the Postcoloniality of Sexuality.
   In:
               The Phobic and the Erotic: The Politics of Sexualities in Contemporary Indi/a/, ed. Brinda Bose and Subhabrata Bhattacharyya. Calcutta: Seagull Books. 159-200.

  Lawrence Cohen
     2005 The Kothi Wars: AIDS, Cosmopolitanism and the Morality of Classification.
               In: Sex in Development: Science, Sexuality and Morality in Global Perspective, Vincanne Adams and Stacey Leigh Pigg (eds.). 269-303.

  Reddy, Gayatri
         2007 Sexual Differences and Their Discontents: Shifting Contexts of "Thirdness" in Hyderabad.
     In
                 The Phobic and the Erotic: The Politics of Sexualities in Contemporary India, Brinda Bose and Subhabrata Bhattacharyya, eds. Calcutta: Seagull Books. 301-322.
   ***
  Here are some examples:
  Syed, Renate: Tṛtīyā Prakṛti: Das "Dritte Geschlecht" im Alten Indien,
  in: Asiatische Studien, 57, 2003, S. 63-120 (available on-line, URL: 
  <http://dx.doi.org/10.5169/seals-147596>)
  Ruth Vanita (ed.): Same-sex love in India : readings from literature and history / edited by Ruth Vanita [et al.]. - Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000 [+ later reprints].
  Rutha Vanita (ed.): Queering India : same-sex love and eroticism in Indian culture and society / ed. by Ruth Vanita. - London [et al.] : 
  Routledge, 2002
  Ruth Vanita: Love's rite : same-sex marriage in India and the West / Ruth Vanita. - New Delhi : Penguin Books, 2005
     By the way, there is a website of the GALVA association: 
  <http://www.galva108.org/> (i.e. Gay and Lesbian Vaishnava Association).

  ***
  In addition to what has been already mentioned see 
  - Thomas K. Gugler, "Locating Queer in the Vedas. Das dritte Gechlecht im alten Indien http://www.suedasien.info/analysen/1931
  - L. Zwilling, M. J. Sweet, The evolution of third-sex constructs in ancient India, New Delhi  2000.
  - Amara Das Wilhelm, Trtiya-Prakriti: People of the third sex: understanding homosexuality, transgender idetnityt, and intersex conditions through Hinduism, Philadelphiy 2005
  G. G. Bolich, Conversing on Gender, 2007
  For information with respect to Buddhism see
  L. P. N. Perera, Sexuality in Ancient India. A STudy Based on the Pali Vinayapitaka, Colombo 1993.
  ***
  >... studies of non-standard sexualities in ancient India (..., 
  >transsexualism, ... etc.)
     Not least also in view of the significance of this issue in the MBh, Robert P. Goldman's ”Transsexualism, Gender, and Anxiety in Traditional India”
  [in: Journal of the American Oriental Society 113.3 (1993): 374-401], providing a survey of ”a number of salient examples of transsexualism drawn from the religious and mythological texts of ancient and medieval India” (further references in his bibliography), is likewise rather indispensible.
     ***
  I note that Peter Wyzlic has referred to Ruth Vanita's work. Here's another by her: 'Full of God: Ashtavakra and Ideas of Justice in Hindu Texts' (Religions of South Asia 3 (2009): 167-81). It uses the story of Ashtavakra in Mahabharata 13 and other sources in an imaginative (rather than a strictly indological) way, as a protest against norms of gender, sexual orientation etc. 
     ***
  ...as well as: 
  Zwilling, Leonard. 1992. Homosexuality as seen in indian buddhist texts. In Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender. Ed. José Ignacio Cabezón. Albany: University of New York Press
  a google-preview of which can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/cpaptdk
     there are also some informations on these topics from the point of medical+sexological literature scattered throughout RP Das' monumental work (fortunately endowed with a detailed index):
  Das, Rahul Peter. 2003. The Origin of the Life of a Human Being : Conception and the Female According to Ancient Indian Medical and Sexological Literature. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers.            
  see, for example, his discussion of Skt terms. napuṃsaka and paṇḍaka
      ***

Lars Martin Fosse
lmfosse at getmail.no

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